14 February 2014 – The Information and Communications Technology Council and MediaSmarts are pleased to note that they successfully hosted a jointly-organized Youth and Digital Skills Symposium: Preparing young Canadians to make social, economic and cultural contributions event on February 10. We are deeply grateful to the contribution by all of our participants in shaping a highly stimulating and valuable event.
What happens online can have a real impact. It’s up to us whether the impact is positive or negative. What are some ways of using digital tech for good?
When we were approached by the team at MediaSmarts about getting involved in this year’s Media Literacy Week, we immediately jumped at the chance to participate in this important initiative. Why? Because we are in a new era.
Emerging ideas and trends in the space of new literacies are indeed fluid and, through discussion, seem to always be in a state of constant flux. As teachers and learners engage with online content and media, strategies and pedagogies bounce between conventional and contemporary approaches. This ongoing conversation and discovery is representative of the media landscape itself - always shifting - suggesting that our strategies and approaches should be charged with being able to adapt and grow. A tall order indeed, so how do we build capacity that makes room for convention, innovation and redefinition in literacy?
Time Management
In this lesson, students look at the different ways in which we spend our free time and learn to find balance between active, learning and media activities. They begin by distinguishing between Active, Learning and Screen time, learn how activities can fall into more than one category; and reflect on their lives to see how well screen time is balanced by other types of activities. Finally, students consider how they might improve how their time is balanced.
Quebec Competencies Chart - Dealing with Digital Stress
There’s a long-standing relationship between sex and the Internet. As far as back the 1980s, Usenet and local bulletin board systems were used to share pornographic text files and crude (in both senses) graphics, and people have been using digital media to form and carry out online relationships at least as long. However, just as estimates of how much online traffic and content is made up of sexual material tend to be exaggerated[1], our new report – Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age – from MediaSmarts’ Young Canadians in a Wired World survey of 5,436 students, shows that for Canadian youth, sexuality and romantic relationships play a fairly small part of their online lives.
In grades 2-3, students are still not yet able to think critically about technology, accepting online environments and activities at face value. However, their growing independence means they are looking for more information online, and they are starting to integrate computers and the Internet into their daily lives.
I became a parent before we all had access to smartphones. That makes me sound (and maybe) feel old, but I share that to set the stage for my personal parenting experience.